*X-posted from MozDawg on DAV and Docs*
Thinking about OpenSource and crowd-sourcing and all of that I found myself coming back again and again to the idea of “going Bedouin“. (Now I happen to really admire Bedouin culture and traditions, but that’s another essay.) I’m talking about foundational co-working.
Just now I realized with some shock that the concepts that are central to Bedouin-style co-working are exactly the same as what I envisioned with my first startup. (Alas, it succumbed to infant mortality.)
Back-story: in the late 80s Texas Instrument’s new generation of video chips gave rise to an awesome breakthrough in capabilities, the best example being the Amiga 2500 and the VideoToaster. Combined, video production costs were 1/10th what they had been previously. I saw that as a massive (if only transient) business opportunity.
My idea was this: provide people who were already working in video with turn-key video studios using those systems … they would rapidbly find themselves independent. But key to the franchise concept was networking: small shops off-loading cumbersome tasks or repetitive chores to one another … a sort of load-leveling. Bonus would be that projects would become networked, so contracts that might be far too large and complex for any one studio could be shared.
That was 1988.
In 2007? That, basically, is co-working … and “going Bedouin” fits perfectly with that business model.
Feeling manic? Pumped for consecutive 14 hour days? Just fine.
Distracted by some aspect of personal life? NP … 2 or 4 hours of maintenance (email and such) keeps things ticking over for a little while.
Addendum, from MozDawg comments:
Interesting that you brought up InnoCentive here … it continues the thread I’ve been working today i.e. alternative business models.
Context: looking through material on Alfresco I find that, while it promotes itself as seriously OpenSource, it is far more closed than the dev communities in, say, SalesForce or FaceBook or NetVibes. I felt like I needed a battering ram to access documentation. (Registering as a developer will do the trick, but still … odd to see their reticence.)
On the other hand, by way of contrast, I came across Automatic, who specializes in WordPress … it seems that they’re entirely distributed i.e. no bricks&mortar head office, but everybody draws against revenue.
Then reading about a new Drupal support startup, Acquia, I can’t help thinking that a lot of hours are spent doing what others are doing, and wondering if there isn’t a way of producing better results while reducing over-work.
So many people were so very busy, and pondered why collaboration wasn’t lightening the load or leading to economies of scale.
I really have come full circle, back to 1989!
p.s. some things really don’t change; I just posted to the Alfresco forum about how as soon as I registered on the site I immediately banged my head on their sense of ergonomics.
On the other hand … and this is in case my comment about Alfresco being “reticent” seemed like mere petulance on my part … here’s the documentation that was presented /immediately/ after I registered, on the “My Alfresco” page:
Documentation
WCM 2_1 Product Evaluation Guide.pdf
Alfresco White Paper – Really Simple Search.pdf
Alfresco White Paper – Really Simple DM.pdf
Rivet Logic and Alfresco14Aug07.wmv – Recording of the webinar covering best practices and lessons learned from customer deployments.
Easypress ADP and AlfrescoPartial31Jul07.wmv – Recording of the Easypress and Alfresco webinar.
December 3rd, 2007 on 00:40
Re: Alfresco doc ?
Unfortunately you won’t know that I’ve replied here, but in any case:
That you have found the docs, and months ago, makes it unlikely that you be either receptive or sympathetic to my comment. When I’m preparing documentation I often run into the fact that familiar users have quite a different perspective than the naive new-comer.
I just posted a good example of this to the forum, having to do with the user profile configuration function … completely obvious after you know it’s that lovely teenie icon.
And perhaps I was mistaken in this specific … perhaps there’s already a link to “User Options” or whatever. But as a technical writer I don’t blame the user for not having looked in the right place … and I scold any writers or designers who have that attitude.
No, I can’t elaborate. I should be able to, but at some point in my blundering around I became quite irritated with what seemed to be a symtomatic and system-wide lack of cooperation. So I didn’t make notes, and I didn’t keep track of how many dead-ends I encountered.
I’m glad to know the documents are there, on the wiki.
Perhaps documentation pages on the site should have a banner: “Why are you looking here on the site? The site isn’t where you find documents and whitepapers and such … we aren’t just anu site … if you don’t have the sense to go to the Wiki, well, really, then maybe you shouldn’t be using our system!”
And in case I sound pissed off, it’s because this attitude pisses me off.
Shall I ask permission to be irritated?
Maybe I should …
… but I can assure you: I’m not going to.
p.s. you could have left some teenie hint as to your identity. could have … but didn’t. see what I mean?